Abstract

Transport properties of aliovalent-ion-doped (BFO) thin films have been studied in order to identify the cause of high leakage currents.Doping of ions increased the dc resistivity by more than three orders of magnitude. In contrast, doping of ions such as reduced the dc resistivity by two orders of magnitude. Current–voltage characteristics indicated that the main conduction mechanism for pure and doped BFO was space charge limited, which was associated with the free-carriers trapped by the oxygen vacancies, whereas in the doped BFO, field-assisted ionic conduction was dominant.